The tragic death of thought

Published: 3 August 2010(GMT+10)

[The reader’s attention is drawn to each of the footnoted quotations as integral
to the article. They reinforce the main points but are listed as footnotes to avoid
spoiling the article’s flow—Ed.]

Photo Wikipedia.org

An awful silence filled the room. The young student visibly paled. Until this point
he hadn’t realised that the ‘Fundamentals’ could never be questioned,
even if they were still just theories.

“Your name?”

“Luke Kinsfield.”

“Year?”

“First year.”

“Does anyone else think the same as you Mr Kinsfield?”

“I can’t say.”

More silence hung over the court, like a black dull blanket intent on smothering
this unimaginably treacherous thought. Apparently, this was a thought that didn’t
even deserve the right to a reasonable response. So there wasn’t one.

“We do not entertain the notion of a God,” said the judge. “That
was declared to be an absolute eons ago.1
The point of these hallowed halls of learning is to allow the greatness of human
thought to captivate these simplistic explanations and illuminate them with the
brilliance of human science and technology. You belong neither to this place nor
this age.”

We take the side of science … in spite of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment,
a commitment to materialism. … we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door—Richard
Lewontin

A silent encore of approval swept around the court.

“Your mind has succumbed to the superstitions of a past age and, as such,
you belong with those of a simpler, more neurotic disposition.”

The young man desperately wanted to respond but he had been branded and he knew
his words would count for nothing. Frustration and anger welled up within him. In
one final bid to be heard, he squared on his interrogator.

“The whole theory of evolution is built on a chance happening, which we, as
students, are expected to ‘believe’.2
When we do have a problem believing, you assure us that it’s only
natural as the human mind is actually unable to fully grasp concepts like infinite
time or space. Yet you dictate that God could not have created the earth. The rationale?
If there actually is a God, then He too would have only come about by a selective
evolutionary process over a humongous period of time. Dare I suggest that an infinite
God would, by definition, belong to a realm of understanding that is way beyond
the thought processes of man? Surely your dogmatism in this area is no more or less
than a sort of ‘scientific blasphemy’!

…every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about
a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer—Richard
Dawkins

“You cannot explain to us where life comes from, nor can you give a scientific
reason for where the encyclopedic information comes from in every cell.3 The expected proof of evolution from the fossil
record has never materialised—instead we are given the explanation that intermediate
stages have ‘disappeared’ because they failed to be preserved as fossils,
and that is supposed to be acceptable?4
You add and subtract millions of years to make the facts fit your theory. But the
truth of the matter is that you do this to mask the weaknesses in your own argument.

“And you succeed—the average Joe is not going to question you. Some
excellent mathematicians don’t hold you in such high esteem, though, and have
deemed all your chance happenings statistically impossible.5 You still don’t fully understand how the bee
flies and you spin an exasperatingly ridiculous yarn about how the peacock got its
tail.6

Dignity, hope and justice for all mankind is now just a faint memory, taken
out and dusted off at concerts by phenomenally rich celebrities. You can keep your
‘brilliant illumination’, and while the spotlight is on, why don’t
you have a good hard look at the damage you have done to the human spirit.”

Darwin’s theory offered a resolution to humanity’s perennial crisis
of guilt. By proposing that each organism’s drive for self-containment actually
benefited the species as a whole, Darwin found a convenient formula for expiating
the accumulating guilt of an age when self-interest and personal aggrandizement
ruled supreme—Jeremy Rifkin

His words clattered around the room, the atmosphere electric. But no-one was really
listening. He was branded. He felt obliterated, rubbed out.

With a patronising gesture the learned professor signalled for the student to be
taken away.

The members of the court sank back in their seats, thankful that they belonged to
such a distinguished body of intellectuals—thankful that, unlike this hapless
student, they had not entertained their doubts. Scientists had reached dizzy heights
of acclaim on the back of evolutionary theory. Mankind looked to them to
reveal the hidden secrets of the universe. Turning from old, worn out, primitive
traditions which shackled the conscience, the ‘new man’, thanks to them,
was at last at liberty to enjoy all the multifaceted hues of his nature.

They were the New Priests with a mandate to discover the keys to ‘eternal
life’, which, as in all matters relating to survival, meant the inheritance
of the rich, powerful and famous.7
This was hardly a position that they were going to abdicate due to some trifling
inconsistencies in logic. The facts, given time, would stack up and they
could relax—after all, there was plenty of time!

The young student was led away.

He had committed intellectual suicide.

Or had he?

Referenced quotations

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent
absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its
extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment,
a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science
somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but
on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes
to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism
is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” Prof. Richard
Lewontin, a geneticist and one of the world’s leaders in promoting evolutionary
biology; Billions and Billions of Demons, The New York Review, 9 January,
1997, p. 31. Return to text.

“We can accept a certain amount of luck in our explanations,
but not too much. The question is, how much? The immensity of geological time entitles
us to postulate more improbable coincidences than a court of law would allow, but
even so there are limits. Cumulative selection is the key to all our modern explanations
of life. It strings a series of acceptable lucky events (random mutations) together
in a nonrandom sequence so that, at the end of the sequence, the finished product
carries the illusion of being very very lucky indeed, far too improbable to have
come about by chance alone, even given a time span millions of time longer than
the age of the universe so far. Cumulative selection is the key but it had to get
started, and we cannot escape the need to postulate a single-step chance event in
the origin of cumulative selection itself.” Prof. Richard Dawkins, former
holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford
University; The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986,
p. 139. See also this response, <http://creation.com/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-the-blind-watchmaker>.
Return to text.

“The computer on which I am writing these words has
an information storage capacity of about 64 kilobytes (one byte is used to hold
each character of text). The computer was consciously designed and deliberately
manufactured. The brain with which you are understanding my words is in an array
of some ten million kiloneurones. Many of these billions of nerve cells have each
more than a thousand ‘electric wires’ connecting them to other neurones.
Moreover at the molecular genetic level, every single one of more than a trillion
cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital
information as my entire computer.” Prof. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker,
W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986, Preface, p. xvii. Return
to text.

“No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know
the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated species, round
which, according to my theory, there has been much extinction. Or again, if we look
to an organ common to all the members of a large class, for in this latter case
the organ must first have been formed at an extremely remote period, since which
all the many members of the class have been developed; and in order to discover
the early transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have
to look to very ancient and ancestral forms long since become extinct.” Charles
Darwin, The Origin of Species (6th edition), Everyman’s
Library, 1928, p. 170. Return to text.

“ … there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining
them all in a random trial is … an outrageously small probability that could
not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not
prejudiced either by social beliefs or scientific training into the conviction that
life originated on the earth [by chance, naturalistic processes], this simple calculation
wipes the idea entirely out of court.” Professors (and competent mathematicians)
Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe; Evolution from Space, 1981, p. 176.

Dr. H. B. Holroyd, mechanical engineer and retired head of the Department of Physics,
Augustana College, Illinois, USA., independently came to similar conclusions:
“The Darwinian error was caused by the failure to use necessary mathematics.
… “Darwinism is physical and mathematical nonsense, and it is logical
nonsense as well, for a sound thinker does not assume anything which must be deduced
from his theory. Darwinism is, indeed, far more a blunder than a theory, and physical
scientists should have shown this clearly and effectively decades ago.” Darwinism
is Physical and Mathematical Nonsense, Creation Research Society Quaterly 9(1):5–13,
1972. Return to text.

“For me the peacock’s fan has the unmistakable
stamp of positive feedback. It is clearly the product of some kind of uncontrolled,
unstable explosion that took place in evolutionary time. So thought Darwin in his
theory of sexual selection and so, explicitly, and in so many words, thought the
greatest of his successors, R.A. Fisher. After a short piece of reasoning he concluded
(in his book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection): ‘ … plumage
developed in the male, and sexual preference for such development in the female,
must thus advance together, and so long as the process is unchecked by severe counter
selection, will advance with ever increasing speed. In the total absence of such
checks, it is easy to see that the speed of development will be proportional to
the development already attained, which will therefore increase with time exponentially,
or in geometric progression.’ ” Prof. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker,
W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986, p. 199.

In contrast to this story, is the opinion of this expert engineer and biomimetics
researcher (mimicking nature’s designs): "My favourite evidence is the peacock
tail feather. It has beautiful iridescent colours produced by thin film interference.
The feathers have layers of keratin with precision thickness comparable to the wavelengths
of the individual colours of light. The feather barbs are also incredibly well aligned
to produce mathematical patterns like ellipsoids and cardioids. The design of peacock
feathers is so precise that engineers cannot replicate it. Yet the feathers seem
to exist purely for decoration! I think that the peacock feather shows not only
that there is a Creator but that the Creator is supremely wise and caring. I have
no doubt that God wanted humans to enjoy the beauty of the peacock feather." Prof.
Stuart Burgess; Expert Engineer Eschews “Evolutionary Design”, Creation
32(1):35–37, 2010. Return to text.

“Darwin’s theory offered a resolution to humanity’s
perennial crisis of guilt. By proposing that each organism’s drive for self-containment
actually benefited the species as a whole, Darwin found a convenient formula for
expiating the accumulating guilt of an age when self-interest and personal aggrandizement
ruled supreme.” Jeremy Rifkin, socialist and critic of social Darwinism;
Algeny,
Viking Press, New York, 1983, p. 95. He also wrote (p. 89): “The bourgeoisie
was in need of a ‘proper’ justification for the new factory system with
its dehumanising process of division of labour. By claiming that a similar process
was at work in nature, Darwin provided an ideal rationale for those capitalists
hell-bent on holding the line against any fundamental challenge to the economic
hierarchy they managed and profited from.”

Jacques Barzan writes: “In every European country between 1870 and 1914 there
was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition,
an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party
demanding the conquest of power, and a racialist party demanding internal purges
against aliens—all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, or even
before, invoked Spencer and Darwin which was to say science incarnate. …
Race was biological, it was sociological; it was Darwinian.” Darwin, Marx,
Wagner: Critique of a heritage (2nd edition), Doubleday, Garden City, New York,
1958, p. 94–95. Return to text.

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